The life and times of a displaced 'southern' American living and working overseas.. who sometimes finds time to knit.
I started my blog while living in Korea, then I moved to Germany, and I just moved to northern Italy (November 2012). I am: iwouldratherknit on ravelry

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Some of my Christmas Market Purchases and a little knitting...

I saw these 2 little sheep in the window of a store in Bolzano. They were the last 2 that were left. They are made out of the natural sheep's roving and are hand-made. I added them to my rustic hand carved Nativity scene that I had purchased in Poland one time. They do look a bit like 'giant sheep' but with sweet little faces like that-- I don't think that 'Joseph' would have been alarmed by sheep the size of horses, do you? I'll have to see if I can find some roving, some day, and make some more appropriately sized sheep.

I got this at the Innsbruck Christmas Market. It was hand-made out of TIRES!! I couldn't resist it! I will store yarn or anything heavy that I need to carry when having handles would be more useful than just trying to haul a heavy cardboard box around. It's pretty big too.

I did a tiny bit of knitting during break. I just 'winged' it and knitted a little sheep out of some multi-colored fuzzy yarn that I found on sale here in Italy. It was difficult yarn to knit with and I'm glad that I didn't pay much at all for it. There is enough to knit another sheep-- I'll have to wait awhile while the memory of how difficult the yarn was to work with fades a bit. I put a bell on a gold cord around his neck. *Can you see how much more 'fuzzy' this photo is than the tire bucket is? The tire photo was taken before the most 'recent' camera drop to the pavement. I'm afraid that was the one that was ONE DROP TOO MANY. My camera seems to have suffered too many 'concussions' and isn't able to do the job anymore.

Here's a little star that I knitted out of some sparkly red, green and white left-over yarn that I had. The hardest part was trying to weave in a bent piece of wire through the i-cord tube. Why was I using a bent piece of wire you ask? Well, it was all I had... no stores open... to find more. I needed the wire to be thin enough that I could pinch it at the points so that I could make it 'look like a star' as much as possible.... and strong enough to keep the bent shape. I used some left-over wire from an old crafts show from many years ago-- 'SEE, there is a REASON for not throwing EVERYTHING that you no longer have a need for (at the moment - that is)... it could come in handy some day. I think you learn to do this just from being a teacher... much less a 'crafty type of person' who just happens to live overseas with limited 'crafts' materials-- depending on where you are living. You just keep things-- because it is likely to be needed in the future.

A candy cane knitted ornament that I made. This was the first one that I did. I tried using some jewelry making wire-- it wasn't really sturdy enough-- and it was so time consuming trying to force/weave/push it through the one color -- that I decided that it held the shape 'good enough' and I only put the wire in ONE COLOR of the candy cane!

What else have I been doing? I've spent quite a bit of time... 'downstairs' in the 'extra room'... the room that you need a guide to go with you to make sure you make it back out safely. It is where all the boxes got shoved after I moved in and had 2 weeks to get my house ready for company. That was after teaching all day... in the winter (ceiling lights aren't very bright and I have really tall ceilings too) ... I had to get 3 bedrooms ready, boxes out of the way, etc. So, after a certain point-- everything that didn't have a home or I didn't have time to deal with... got shoved/hauled to this extra room downstairs. I had wanted to work on it this summer and I had planned to do so- until the knee surgery/injury problem prevented me from doing it. Now, the problem is... I want to find things to get rid of... but, since I haven't seen this stuff in a long time now-- it is more difficult to get rid of something that you haven't seen in awhile... and that you still like. I'm working on it- I'm trying. I have sorted through things and I do have some things set aside that I can do without-- but I need to get rid of a lot more things. ANYONE ELSE 'sorting' or getting rid of things?